Exhibitions
Mark Francis: Elements
Mark Francis (b.1962) is one of the ‘Young British Artists’ (YBAs) who came to prominence in the early 1990s, and his work is held in many public and private collections, including the Tate Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Saatchi Collection, London. This exhibition at MK Gallery was his first major solo exhibition in a public gallery in the U.K. The exhibition featured a surprising and intriguing mixture of exhibits; Francis’s abstract paintings were shown alongside antiquarian prints of birds eggs, shells, insects, fungi, medical dissections, diseases and natural history. In addition there were maps, models of fungi and medical ephemera drawn from Francis’s extensive personal collection. This was the first time that Francis’s paintings and private collections had been brought together, affording a unique opportunity to consider the influences and contexts for his abstract work. Paintings made during the preceding seven years were shown in the Long Gallery, the largest of MK Gallery’s three exhibiting spaces. The walls of the Middle Gallery were densely packed in imitation of the artist’s London sitting room with framed prints and other selected items which evoked the order in which Francis normally displayed his collections. The Cube Gallery featured four entirely new, previously unseen paintings, which suggested a new direction in the artist’s work. Speaking of his collecting Francis said: Collecting has been a hobby since childhood, from football cards to model soldiers. For me it feels like some kind of impulsive ordering. By this I mean gathering information which seems to be intuitive but might not have a structured order at the time. It’s only through the accumulation of objects / prints that some sort of understanding and placement takes place. In my case the interest is natural history, medical images and astronomy, amongst other things. The way that I have presented the framed prints at home and at MK Gallery is to place them side by side so that they make some kind of grid-like amorphous form. Each print tends to lose its own identity and you start to look at the constructed surface as a whole. This tends to echo elements within my paintings such as the “Compression” or “Growth” series.
£0.00
Read more
Richard Hamilton: New Technology and Printmaking
Thirty-one works by Richard Hamilton, one of the world’s most respected artists living today can be seen in the Long Gallery. Known as the “father of British pop art”, Hamilton (b.1922) has been making prints since 1939. His manipulation of painted and photographic images by computer means that his prints remain as innovative in conception and execution now as they have always been. The examples on view at MK G, made between 1964 and 1998, reveal his sophisticated and highly individual style. Hamilton will be at MK G on the evening of 30 March for a discussion about his work as part of the Artists in Conversation at MK G series.
£0.00
Read more
Printers inc.: Recent British Prints from the Arts Council and British Council Collections
Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin are among the artists included in the exhibition, printers inc. showing in the Cube Gallery (gallery 1), sponsored by Denton Wilde Sapte. This national touring exhibition from the Arts Council Collection, organised by the Hayward Gallery, presents 27 prints by 21 artists - some of Britain’s brightest young talents, working in the UK. The techniques used are diverse, ranging from woodcut to screenprint to letterpress. In addition, the ‘Habitat’, ‘Supastore’ and ‘Screen’ portfolios of recent British prints have been borrowed from the British Council to augment this rich and varied selection.
£0.00
Read more
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2000
The prestigious annual New Contemporaries exhibition opens at Milton Keynes Gallery on Saturday 17 June. The exhibition, which is sponsored this year by Bloomberg, shows the work of thirty-three artists, selected by Time Out critic Sarah Kent, artist Gavin Turk, and independent curator Jeremy Millar, chosen from an original submission of over 1200 entries. It subsequently tours to Manchester and Edinburgh. Welcoming the exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery, Director Stephen Snoddy said: ‘I am delighted that MK G is the launch venue for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2000 exhibition. MK G is committed to bringing new audiences to new art. This exhibition offers the people of MK and the region the ideal opportunity to experience stimulating new work in a variety of media by some of the most promising artists currently emerging from fine art courses in the UK – without having to travel far.’ He went on to add, ‘Dealers, collectors, critics, curators and visitors enjoy coming to New Contemporaries exhibitions each year to talent spot possible art stars of the future. As the only venue for the exhibition in the South of England this year we expect to attract many visitors to MK from London and beyond.’ First established in 1949, (when it was known as Young Contemporaries), previous exhibitors have included many of the UK’s most prominent artists, such as David Hockney, Patrick Caulfield, and Turner Prize winners Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing and Chris Ofili.
£0.00
Read more
Alison Turnbull: Houses into Flats
This exhibition by British artist Alison Turnbull (b.1956), comprised a series of twenty-eight paintings made over the preceding three years. Inspired by architectural plans, sections and elevations, the paintings featured diagrams of public and domestic buildings floating freely against coloured fields. The buildings, most of which Turnbull had never seen, were sourced from an eclectic range of books, maps and the internet. Through her technique of layering and repeatedly abrading the surfaces of her paintings, Turnbull subjected each architectural blueprint to a kind of archaeology. Subjects included a town hall, chapel, villa, apartment, lighthouse, factory, bank, and asylum. Turnbull likened the series to building an imaginary town or evoking the activities and rituals that make up a life. Alison Turnbull's wall work Moon is one of the site-specific commissions that was made for Milton Keynes Theatre Foyer, immediately next door to Milton Keynes Gallery, funded during the construction of the building by the Percent for Art scheme.
£0.00
Read more
Layla Curtis
Layla Curtis might be likened to a cartographer, but her maps are painstakingly produced and more a commentary on mapping than useful depictions of locations. For the exhibition at MK G she will be making use of sea, road and various world topographical maps, collaged into intriguing hybrid pieces. Some of them are specifically influenced by the grid format of Milton Keynes, one of them turning MK into a rectangular island surrounded by the sea. Another new work is a framed text piece, Index (Everywhere I’ve ever been), presented like a hoax index to an atlas, incorporating only the places Curtis has been to in her lifetime. Curtis recently said of her work: ‘Travelling has always been an integral part of my life. Like most people I rely on and trust maps to find my way, locate myself and plan journeys. By dissecting, dismembering and collaging maps to create new, hybrid maps, I aim to explore the effects of disturbing this trusted system of mapping.’ (Interview with Mike Dawson, Flux magazine, April 2000). With the world political map in constant flux, Curtis’s work invites us to consider such issues as disputed borders, international relations, unions, conflicts, internationalisation and globalisation.
£0.00
Read more
Richard Wright
For his solo show in MK Gallery's Cube Gallery, Richard Wright (b.1960) made a specifically commissioned wall drawing. The drawing referenced seating in the adjacent MK Theatre, which opened at the same time as MK Gallery in October 1999, Wright's drawing process falls between action painting and site-specific installation. His approach is meticulous and usually of a symmetrical design but the final drawing results from what happens in situ; its execution becomes a live event. Though hand made, his flat emblematic images look mechanically produced. The use of gouache brings areas of intense colour that look as if they have been printed onto the gallery wall. Wright tends to use simple geometric forms that focus on the connections between art, design and architecture. The style of popular culture is interspersed with emblematic forms that are linked to modernist paintings and also graphic designs like tattoos and corporate logos. This blending of imagery is integrated with the physical architecture to create a temporary work of art that will remain only as a visual memory for the viewer.
£0.00
Read more
Conversation: An Exhibition of Figurative Sculpture
Conversation is an intriguing exhibition of twenty-two figurative sculptures in a variety of media, mostly by well-known British contemporary artists, such as Tony Cragg, John Davies, Antony Gormley, Julian Opie and Marc Quinn, but it also includes some unexpected pieces, such as a 3rd century BC painted terracotta figure and a 20th century wooden Lobi Shrine Figure from Ghana. Selected by the Gallery's Director Stephen Snoddy, the sculptures will be displayed in such a way as to invite visitors to see how the works might ‘speak’ to each other, and consider how to interpret the ‘conversations’ established between them. The arrangement or configuration of the sculptures is, therefore, just as important as the individual works, with the exhibition acting as one large tableau. In what might be termed a game of ‘musical statues’, the sculptures will change positions at least once during the exhibition, to allow different conversations or readings to be found between the works. The gallery’s free guided tours on Wednesdays and Sundays will be used to invite visitors to engage with the displays, by encouraging them to identify these possible ‘conversations’ for themselves. The exhibition offers visitors the chance to see a selection of figurative sculpture by some of the country’s best-known contemporary artists. It contributes to the discussion on the continuing development of figurative sculpture and offers the opportunity to consider such themes as private communication and human exchange, silence and darkness, life and death, the inner self and the outside reality. There is no catalogue for the exhibition but each work will be accompanied by an extended wall text.
£0.00
Read more
Richard Ross: Gathering Light
Richard Ross (b.1947) has assembled a collection of large format colour photographs over a number of years, while travelling on assignments for magazines. In capturing these remarkable locations on film, the American photographer demonstrates an expert understanding of the camera, which makes tangible the very essence of the visual. Gathering Light includes carefully staged scenes of interiors with a backdrop of various faiths and cultures. Tombs, churches and temples provide an atmospheric ground for his studies, portraying the situation as if it were a stage set. The lighting found within these situations becomes the focus of the work as the luminosity emerging in these images comes from the coincidence of light and dark. MK G presents fourteen photographs selected from this touring exhibition, which was initiated by the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.
£0.00
Read more
Jan Dibbets: Ten Cupolas
Jan Dibbets (b.1941) presents ten images of cupolas, all upward interior views of domes taken over a period of thirteen years, beginning in 1983 with his photograph of the Four Courts in Dublin and ending with his 1995 view of the observatory in Paris. They are united not only by a common theme but also a philosophy in which the artist questions our perception of light and distance as well as presenting us with images of great subtlety.
£0.00
Read more
John Riddy: Recent Work
John Riddy (b.1959 in Northampton) presents images which place architecture and inhabited space within the photograph as a sequence of echoes and reflections. Though appearing nostalgic, the photographs have a sense of clarity, which makes formal the complexity of perspective and texture. His understanding of the relationship between place and image is exhibited in his particular use of framing within the camera lens, increasing the severity of the subject by playing on the perspective of surfaces, gravity, balance and light. Not simply documents of places, they also explore the poetic and continuing possibility of private reflection. For this exhibition at MK Gallery John Riddy selected ten recent works, which included views of Rome, Valencia, Whipsnade and London. In contrast to the Richard Ross and Jan Dibbets exhibitions which were showing in adjacent rooms at MK Gallery, and featured interior views, the works selected by Riddy were all exterior subjects.
£0.00
Read more
FaceOn
The works in FaceOn examine the relationship artists have with the subjects they represent through various strategies which give visibility to others, (often the displaced or dispossessed), and insist on us, the viewers, looking into the eyes and faces of these subjects. The selected artists are: Jennifer Bornstein, Roderick Buchanan, Adam Chodzko, Alfredo Jaar, Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Philip Lorca DiCorcia. Visitors to MK Gallery will be met with video and installation works, staged colour photographic tableaux, performance documentation film, and photographic work which has the initial appearance of family portraiture. Each image in the exhibition shows the subject to be consciously looking out to the audience or documents a direct contact between artist and subject. Philip Lorca DiCorcia's portraits of male prostitutes, drifters and drug addicts, all taken in a glowing early evening light along Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood are titled with the persons details and fee: Brent Booth: 21 Years Old, Des Moines, Iowa: $30. New York artist Jennifer Bornstein makes her work as an interloper. She approaches strangers and pretends a familial or physical bond, inviting them to have their photograph taken with her as if a family snapshot. Roderick Buchanan's work Me and My Neighbours also introduces the artists’ presence into a family portrait and 'positions cultural differences between photographer and subjects as desirable if not inevitable' (Craig Richardson). Mierle Laderman Ukeles countered the derogatory treatment of New York bin men by photographing herself shaking hands with 8500 'sanitation workers'. These images recall politicians’ 'flesh-pressing' rituals. Alfredo Jaar 'resists the ephemerality of our encounter with refugee images' in the mass media by photographing One Hundred Times Nguyen, repetitions of the portrait of Nguyen Thi Thuy, a Vietnamese asylum seeker in Hong Kong, with slight differences which form acompassionate narrative. Adam Chodzko brings together uncredited extras from Ken Russell's film The Devils who address the camera and recount their experiences as extras while the film plays behind them, uniting the now middle-aged figures with their orgiastic film past. This exhibition was originated by Site Gallery, Sheffield and has been co-curated by Mark Durden and Craig Richardson.
